Anne Applebaum: What USAID's Absence Looks Like on the Ground

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Speaker 14 Hello and welcome to the Bullworld Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome back one of our faves, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Speaker 19 Her latest piece is the most nihilistic conflict on earth about Sudan's civil war and how the cuts to USAID have exacerbated the crisis.

Speaker 18 Her book, Autocracy Inc., will be out in paperback later this month.

Speaker 49 It's Ann Applebaum.

Speaker 30 And I got to tell you, I was asking my husband last night, I said, Do you have any questions for Ann Applebaum?

Speaker 18 He takes a deep breath and sighs.

Speaker 51 And he says, No, I don't think I can handle hearing any more bad news from Ann Applebum.

Speaker 10 It's like, that's sad.

Speaker 7 We love Ann Applebum.

Speaker 17 So, can you just give our listeners some uplift before we have to hear about famine and autocracy?

Speaker 33 Is there anything happening in your life this summer that brings you joy?

Speaker 56 So, I'm speaking to you from the very deep Polish countryside, and I would like to report that after three years of trying, this year I got my wildflowers to grow.

Speaker 56 So, I now have a kind of meadow where wildflowers grow, and they've killed off the weeds. So the wildflowers defeated the weeds.

Speaker 10 And this is the- What are the colors of wildflowers in the Polish?

Speaker 56 They're many, many colors, yellow and blue, and kind of light violet. And they're very nice.
That's beautiful.

Speaker 36 You might want to post.

Speaker 47 Do you have an Instagram?

Speaker 10 Are you on Instagram?

Speaker 56 I have an Instagram, and I have already posted pictures of my wildflower garden.

Speaker 40 Okay, well, maybe I'm not following that.

Speaker 53 I've got a following at Applebaum on Instagram, it turns out.

Speaker 33 Okay, wonderful.

Speaker 21 We'll check that out.

Speaker 30 Now, to real business, I'm going to spend plenty of time on Sudan at the end because it's interesting and has a lot of geopolitical impacts.

Speaker 52 But we do have, unfortunately, some sad home front news we've got to get to on your autocracy beat.

Speaker 7 Tim Apple, Tim Cook, CEO of

Speaker 52 one of the most successful companies in the world, worth untold amounts of money, is concerned about the tariffs that the U.S.

Speaker 60 is going to charge on the equipment and his phones.

Speaker 59 He was a little concerned that the Commerce Secretary, Howard Nutlick, was out there talking about how Americans are going to start screwing in the screws on the phones.

Speaker 48 So, to take care of that, he was yesterday in the White House and he offered Donald Trump a plaque with a 24-carat gold base.

Speaker 11 He says this is a unique unit of one.

Speaker 3 He wanted to let the president know that a former U.S.

Speaker 52 Marine corporal who now works at Apple made it.

Speaker 27 Congratulations, Mr.

Speaker 63 President, he says, as he gives him this gift.

Speaker 59 Tom Nichols said these are like the gifts the Politburo members used to give to Brezhnev.

Speaker 50 I'm wondering what you think about

Speaker 52 these CEOs having to suck up to Donald Donald Trump with gifts.

Speaker 56 The idea that politics has become so personalized, that there are no institutions, there are no systems, that the only way you can affect or change policy is by offering a valuable gift to the leader, is indeed,

Speaker 56 I would say, pretty much contradicts everything that the founders intended when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So, no,

Speaker 56 it's not a good sign. I mean, people give gifts to presidents all the time, and that's pretty normal, but

Speaker 56 you're right. I mean, an ugly thing with a 24-karat gold base,

Speaker 56 you know, designed for no other reason other than to be flattering

Speaker 56 is a strange gift.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 18 On live TV, on live TV.

Speaker 62 And from the CEO.

Speaker 47 And it comes in the context of during the same press conference, Trump was taking some shots at Intel.

Speaker 33 Their CEO this morning, Tom Cotton, was on Maria Bart Romo's show talking about how the Intel CEO has ties to China.

Speaker 58 Our president that watches a lot of cable news apparently was live tweeting that and bleeded out.

Speaker 64 The CEO of Intel is highly conflicted and must resign immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.

Speaker 12 So like, sure.

Speaker 63 like people give gifts to presidents and like there's back and forth and a trading of gifts at meetings and such but like clearly in this case what you have here is ceos of these high-tech companies like feeling like they need to suck up to the president or else they will be punished specifically.

Speaker 8 And maybe, who knows, maybe the government will even try to

Speaker 30 push out the CEOs or the executives of these private companies if he doesn't like them.

Speaker 50 And it is a totally insane banana republic, not a free market capitalist democracy.

Speaker 55 And I think that it's intriguing that No Republicans have said anything.

Speaker 17 I mean,

Speaker 13 imagine Barack Obama trying, you know, saying like, Rupert Murdoch must resign.

Speaker 26 There's no other solution to this problem.

Speaker 51 You know, the entire Republican Senate conference would go, would go crazy.

Speaker 8 But here we are.

Speaker 56 If I can do a Soviet analogy again,

Speaker 56 one of the reasons why the Soviet Union eventually fell apart was because all these personnel decisions about who should run the company and who should

Speaker 56 make economic decisions were political. And so you got to run the company if you were a loyal party member and not because you were good at running the company.

Speaker 56 And you got to be in charge of scientific research if you, you know, could recite Marx's texts forwards and backwards, not because you actually knew anything about science.

Speaker 56 And that was the reason why the Soviet economy declined and eventually died. And you know, we had two decades of catastrophe in Russia.

Speaker 56 So, you know, there is a connection between how apolitical companies are, how separate they are from political influence, and their ability to do well.

Speaker 56 You know, it's not just kind of ugly and tacky, which of course it is, but it's also, this is the reason why Americans did used to favor the free market because they thought that it would produce better outcomes and that we would become more prosperous.

Speaker 56 And so, the idea that we now have CEOs afraid for their lives because they might be attacked on X or somebody might make dumb videos about them on TikTok, or God forbid, somebody should, some militia group should stand outside of their houses.

Speaker 56 I mean, I think that's all part of this. You know, it's not just Trump.
There's now a system of pressure.

Speaker 56 You know, there are a lot of people following Trump who will do what he says, and they know that.

Speaker 32 Afraid is a key word there, right? Because there is like a culture of fear, I think, in boardrooms around the country where we cannot get crosswise with the leader.

Speaker 15 And like, that is a very un-American type feeling.

Speaker 18 And it's certainly in my lifetime, I can't really think of a parallel to that.

Speaker 55 You know, maybe boardrooms being afraid of popular uprising against them, of protest, or of

Speaker 66 people organizing against their brand or something.

Speaker 68 But that's the market at work.

Speaker 12 It's the market speaking.

Speaker 55 Having to care about the feelings of a single leader, I mean, does feel like a

Speaker 53 notable mark towards autocracy that is different from where we've been before.

Speaker 56 Yeah. And of course, the irony

Speaker 56 of the situation is that if all of these CEOs worked together, so if there was a, I mean, maybe it's more difficult with CEOs, but certainly in the case of universities or in the case of law firms, you know, if they all, you know, all each one of them is separately vying for the attention and favor of the president, if instead as a group, the tech CEOs said, you know, screw you, we won't do that, then they would have a lot more power and they would get control back.

Speaker 56 But they don't seem to have figured that out yet. I mean, they seem to each be trying to do a separate deal, you know, on the assumption that they can have a special link to the president.

Speaker 56 If they just find the most attractive 24-carat gold item, that they'll have the way in.

Speaker 56 When you're dealing with someone who's operating on whims, you know, you can be in his favor one day and out of his favor the next day.

Speaker 56 And that's why what you really need is, you know, you need to be dealing with rules and institutions and things that aren't subject to whimsical change. And that's what our system created in the past.

Speaker 56 And as I say, if tech CEOs were

Speaker 56 thinking harder about this and thinking more long-term, then there would be a group effort and we would see it.

Speaker 61 One more note on the Autocracy Watch this morning news from NBC.

Speaker 50 Listeners, I remember hearing about Brian Driscoll or the Drizz.

Speaker 51 He was affectionately known by his colleagues.

Speaker 69 He was this kind of a career FBI agent that ended up as the acting FBI director after Ray Ray resigned.

Speaker 61 And Trump and Cash and others, I think Emil Bove was part of this, had demanded that he fire agents who had investigated the January 6th insurrectionists.

Speaker 64 The news this morning is he's being forced out of the Bureau, according to a source.

Speaker 33 Directly familiar.

Speaker 50 We talked a couple of weeks ago to Mike Feinberg, similarly, who was essentially forced out.

Speaker 59 He chose to resign because of his friendship, personal friendship with Pete Strzok, who was on Cash Patel's enemies list.

Speaker 3 Again, I mean, that's now we're moving into government service versus a private company, but like the idea that they would push out an agent who is well regarded by everybody in the Bureau solely because

Speaker 61 I guess he was trying to defend his colleagues who were just doing their job in a previous administration.

Speaker 50 You know, we don't need to keep going back to Soviet Russia, I guess, but there's some other parallels here, huh, Ann?

Speaker 56 The politicization of justice and the politicization of

Speaker 56 prosecution and investigations,

Speaker 56 all of that also, I mean,

Speaker 56 you don't have to go that far away. I mean, you can look in our own hemisphere.
You can look at lots of other places. That almost always ends badly.

Speaker 56 I mean, what you get is instead of justice, you get political revenge and cycles of revenge. And

Speaker 56 the thing that makes me very curious about all this is, you know, okay,

Speaker 56 there's a theory of executive power and there are Republicans who believe the president should be able to do whatever he wants, and he should be able to have whatever kind of FBI he wants, and therefore he should be able to investigate everything.

Speaker 56 Okay, that's fine. Are they prepared for, you know, I don't know, President Gavin Newsom to have that same kind of power and to use it against them?

Speaker 56 I mean, it seems very strange to me that they're destroying institutions and putting in place this very personalized systems that could then be used by anybody for anything.

Speaker 56 And I don't really understand what their long-term game is.

Speaker 56 Either their long-term game is there won't be free elections or we'll fix the election or we'll steal it or gerrymander it or something, you know, or they're perfectly prepared for someone who they disagree with, who doesn't like them to be able to use those same tools at some point in the future.

Speaker 56 And that's the piece of it that mystifies me. I mean, do they understand what the long-term implications are?

Speaker 56 Do they imagine this is something that is only going to be for a year or two or three years rather and then it's going to go away? Or is the plan that they never lose power again?

Speaker 56 I genuinely don't know.

Speaker 47 Yeah, I think some for probably both for some. Some there's it's nihilism, it's short-term thinking.

Speaker 54 It's okay, whatever, zero sum.

Speaker 31 We'll fight this out in the future.

Speaker 20 But I do wonder that about people with

Speaker 66 corporate financial incentives, for example, like going back to the Fox counterfactual, like looking at how Trump has dealt with CBS and other companies, looking at how he's bullying now CEOs who don't know what they want, does News Corp not think that there won't be pressure on the next Democratic administration to go after them?

Speaker 21 And like they imagine how up in arms they were when Barack Obama, like one, I forgot what the exact quote was, one time he made kind of an aside about how Fox isn't real news or something.

Speaker 19 I forgot what the exact quote was.

Speaker 37 But like, let me tell you, Sean Hannity remembers the quote because he talked about it like for years afterwards, right?

Speaker 10 I don't know that anymore they will be able to.

Speaker 50 you know, just wager on the fact that if the Democrats get in power, they will be restrained by their own commitment to norms or impulses or weakness or whatever.

Speaker 66 I think that there will be a lot of pressure on the next Democratic president to go after people

Speaker 59 that have been complicit in this, up to and including corporate executives.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 13 the precedent will have been set for it.

Speaker 56 The president will have been set, and also there will be support for it in a way there didn't used to be.

Speaker 56 Nobody wanted even Joe Biden to go after Fox. I mean, there was no discussion of that or mention of it.
But I really feel that

Speaker 56 the half of the country that doesn't vote for Trump, and it is half, I mean, it's whatever it is, 49.1% or something, if that becomes 50.02%,

Speaker 56 then it's a different group of people now and they will see the world differently.

Speaker 56 And I'm not saying that's good, but it seems to me like a political fact that it's very strange that the Republicans who are supporting this transformation don't see it.

Speaker 11 I'm also not saying it's good.

Speaker 11 It seems inevitable, I guess, is my point.

Speaker 8 And it seems like they've laid the groundwork for it.

Speaker 74 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 76 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 71 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 77 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 76 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 83 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 85 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 5 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 25 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 31 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 36 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

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Speaker 41 Learn more at MS.Now.

Speaker 49 A couple other things around the world before we get to Sudan.

Speaker 53 We've got the reciprocal tariffs finally went into effect today for most places.

Speaker 27 Some of the steepest duties include Brazil at 50%, Syria at 41%.

Speaker 49 I don't know why.

Speaker 36 Laos and Myanmar, 40%.

Speaker 59 Switzerland, 39%.

Speaker 17 Canada, 30%.

Speaker 30 This is a, it's a really meticulous system we've got here.

Speaker 61 India's at 25%, subject to go up to 50% later this month, though.

Speaker 66 There's an executive order about that last week because the president can just kind of wave his finger now and do this, apparently.

Speaker 50 Vietnam, Taiwan, 20, EU, Japan, South Korea, 15.

Speaker 31 I'm curious your view.

Speaker 62 We did the economics of this yesterday with Josh Barrow, but just like the geopolitical

Speaker 50 like impact of this or thoughts and kind of what you're hearing from folks around the world.

Speaker 56 So if you think this doesn't affect other areas, you know, defense cooperation, willingness to work with the U.S. on other issues, support for the U.S.
and other things that it cares about,

Speaker 10 then you're very wrong.

Speaker 56 And once again, I think what's really disturbing to a lot of people, I heard a lot about Switzerland actually in the last couple of days, is the whimsical nature of it.

Speaker 56 You know, that it doesn't seem to be about any logic or process. It's what the president feels like.
And, you know, Switzerland is an interesting country. It has a rotating presidency.

Speaker 56 The president is one of the members of the cabinet. And if you're the president of Switzerland, you're just not used to thinking that way.
Like, they just can't think that way.

Speaker 56 You know, they think in terms of institutions, and you send someone to negotiate, and the negotiators deal with other negotiators, and there's a process, and at the end of the process, there's an agreement.

Speaker 56 And apparently, they were completely caught by surprise by this very high tariff because that's not what their negotiators were saying. But I don't know.
Maybe I genuinely didn't know the reason.

Speaker 56 Maybe Trump doesn't like Switzerland or there's some

Speaker 7 chocolate

Speaker 10 against the chocolate.

Speaker 56 Skiing, maybe. I don't know.
I have no idea.

Speaker 50 Trump would look kind of silly in a skiing outfit.

Speaker 49 So maybe it's something about that.

Speaker 41 It's aesthetic.

Speaker 56 We're literally at that level of speculation. That will have all kinds of repercussions.
I mean, who's going to want to have any other kind of agreement with the United States?

Speaker 56 I mean, do you want to have any kind of long-term investment in the United States or any kind of

Speaker 56 agreement about anything else, any political deal, anything the U.S. wants to do if the U.S.
has a conflict with China or it wants to anything?

Speaker 56 It means that people are going to be wary of dealing with such a capricious and unpredictable power. I mean, there are also some tragedies here.

Speaker 56 There was a very good article in the New York Times a few days ago about Lesotho, which is a very, very small African country, which for no reason at all

Speaker 56 had a very high tariff put on it.

Speaker 7 Well, that's because we have a trade deficit with them, is why.

Speaker 46 They have one industry.

Speaker 56 Right. They have one export industry.
They export some textiles to the United States. That's it.

Speaker 56 You know, I don't think they can buy that much. So it's not like there's so many options.

Speaker 56 And the article was about the devastation that this tariff had wrought in that economy because suddenly people were nervous about investing in Lesotho and companies that had deals suddenly dried up and you know there was a there's been a kind of panic there and just this idea that by throwing a number onto a chalkboard or whatever it was, he showed up

Speaker 56 the first day. And by mentioning numbers in the air,

Speaker 56 it's almost like you have this, on the other side of the planet, there's this huge reaction and people lose their jobs. It's very disturbing.

Speaker 54 Also, for no reason, like we're going to make the textiles in America that Lesotho is making.

Speaker 5 It's just preposterous.

Speaker 56 Well, so how many textiles can Lesotho be making

Speaker 56 that are somehow in competition with us? Sorry about that. I love that.

Speaker 51 That's kind of an old-timey ring there.

Speaker 56 It's actually an old, it's an old-fashioned phone, and nobody ever calls it, so I don't know why it just rang.

Speaker 10 But anyway.

Speaker 21 That was kind of charming for me, actually.

Speaker 36 No apology necessary.

Speaker 74 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 76 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 71 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 77 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 76 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 83 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 85 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 5 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 25 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 31 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 35 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 39 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at ms.now.

Speaker 30 Let's move on to Ukraine.

Speaker 51 So, Witkoff, I guess, was talking to Putin, former real estate guy, buddy of Trump's.

Speaker 60 Trump bleats this.

Speaker 48 My special envoy, Steve Witkoff, just had a highly productive meeting with Putin.

Speaker 52 Great progress was made.

Speaker 60 Exclamation point.

Speaker 61 Afterwards, I updated some of our European allies.

Speaker 51 I thought that was the most encouraging part of the bleat, that he still thinks that there are allies.

Speaker 3 Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we'll work towards that in the days and weeks to come.

Speaker 65 There's some discussion that a Trump-Putin meeting could be as early as next week.

Speaker 61 Russia was indicating that.

Speaker 86 Russia also is indicating they are not

Speaker 86 likely to be a trilateral talk with Zelensky.

Speaker 66 So what do you make of the latest in these conversations?

Speaker 56 So there's one really important point to make, which is that President Putin has never said that he wants to end the war. And he has also never given up on his main goal.

Speaker 56 And his goal is the destruction or the subjugation of Ukraine, the removal of Ukrainian independence, maybe the replacement of the Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian government, maybe the incorporation of Ukraine into some Russian empire.

Speaker 56 It doesn't matter. He's never said that he doesn't believe that anymore.

Speaker 56 A few days ago, very quite recently, within the last few weeks, he said once again something he said before, which is that everywhere that there has ever been a Russian soldier could be part of the Russian Empire again.

Speaker 56 So that includes Berlin, where of course he was a representative of the Soviet Empire, and it includes the Baltic states, it includes Poland, it includes lots of places.

Speaker 56 So he is still using that kind of language.

Speaker 56 Also, within the last couple of weeks, RA Novosti, which is a Russian state kind of news agency, published an article saying that the end game of the war in Ukraine is that all Ukrainians should be killed.

Speaker 56 you know, destroyed. So they aren't letting up in either in their public rhetoric, either in what they're they're saying to Russians or in what Putin says.

Speaker 56 And so that makes me fear that they aren't prepared for any kind of real peace.

Speaker 56 I mean, it is possible, okay, that the Ukrainian air war, which gets, for reasons I'm not clear about, doesn't get that much attention in press news.

Speaker 56 So this is Ukrainian drones that hit Russian refineries and create these very satisfying explosions that people then pass around on social media. Apparently that has been doing a lot of damage.

Speaker 56 You know, they've hit refineries, they hit defense plants. There was that famous moment, you know, a couple months ago when they hit a bunch of airplanes on an airfield hundreds of miles from Ukraine.

Speaker 56 And so maybe Putin is suffering from that. There's some talk.
Maybe he wants some kind of air truce. It's true that his economy has lots of trouble.
Maybe he is looking for some kind of brief pause.

Speaker 56 But unless there's a... you know, a Russian acknowledgement of Ukraine's right to exist and Ukraine's right to have its own country, then really the war is not over.
And so I still haven't heard that.

Speaker 56 You know, I'm still waiting for that moment to come.

Speaker 47 So the Times has an article out this morning.

Speaker 50 I'm sure in your reaction to it about their analysis of this, because I think it's maybe slightly different than what you just said.

Speaker 63 And they said Putin's overarching goal is primarily to secure a peace deal that achieves his geopolitical aims, not necessarily a certain amount of territory.

Speaker 50 And Trump's best position to deliver on those aims, which include keeping Ukraine out of NATO and preventing the alliance's further expansion.

Speaker 10 Do we think that's what Putin's aims are?

Speaker 58 I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker 56 I mean, Ukraine wasn't in NATO before,

Speaker 56 and NATO has expanded since the war began because Sweden and Finland joined NATO.

Speaker 56 And so I don't think this has anything to do with NATO in that sense. I mean, the issue for Putin isn't Ukraine being in NATO.
Ukraine has never actually been even close to being in NATO.

Speaker 56 What bothered Putin about Ukraine, first of all, just the idea of its independence because he doesn't recognize it as a real country.

Speaker 56 Secondly, the fact that Ukraine had this democracy revolution in 2014 that led to their then pro-Russian sort of autocratic president fleeing the country has bothered Putin a lot because that's the kind of revolution and that's the kind of language that he is most afraid of in Russia.

Speaker 56 You know, there was a really interesting moment a few days ago.

Speaker 56 You may remember that Zelensky passed a law a few days ago that would have taken away the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption institutions.

Speaker 56 And then there was a big protest in Kiev and lots of noise about that. And then actually Zelensky reversed the law.

Speaker 56 There was an interesting comment from Russians saying, criticizing Zelensky for having given that up. In other words, the fact that Zelensky is,

Speaker 56 even during wartime and even during martial law, still has to respect public opinion and is still the leader of a democratic country where people have free speech.

Speaker 56 This is a problem for Putin because if Ukrainians can have that kind of a democracy, then why can't Russians have it?

Speaker 56 They are historically close, and they have been part of the same empire as before, and they are intermarried, and a lot of Ukrainians do speak Russian. So for Putin, Ukraine is an ideological problem.

Speaker 56 NATO is a kind of tertiary thing. Ukraine

Speaker 56 has never been even close to being in NATO. So that wasn't why the war started.
And to make that argument is to accept their propaganda.

Speaker 56 I mean, certainly it's possible that if Putin did ever want to end the war, maybe he would accept that as a kind of fake condition. But I would still be wary of it.

Speaker 56 As I said, until the Russians recognize that Ukraine is not Russia and won't be, then I don't think the war is really over.

Speaker 52 That's an interesting update on the corruption thing because we had Frank Gunfoe, your Atlanta colleague, on God, Time's a Flat Circle.

Speaker 27 Was that this week or last week?

Speaker 48 Last week, I think.

Speaker 50 And we were talking about that.

Speaker 49 We were kind of talking about how it was a bad judgment call initially from Zelensky.

Speaker 15 It's interesting.

Speaker 53 I had not heard that, that after he backtracked, that that became kind of a talking point in Russia.

Speaker 30 Could you just expand on that?

Speaker 51 Like basically, them making the argument that

Speaker 57 he's weak? Or what was there?

Speaker 58 Yeah, like he's a beta. Yeah.

Speaker 56 Putin's idea is that any institution inside Russia that is not dependent on him is a threat.

Speaker 56 And that includes any kind of real opposition, any kind of independent media, any kind of independent organizations.

Speaker 56 I mean, even non-political organizations, historical organizations, for example, I'm quite close to one that was forced to shut down. This is a memorial, you know, any kind of cultural organizations.

Speaker 56 You know, so it's very close to the old totalitarian idea. You know, everything is controlled by me and everything that's not controlled by me is an enemy or some kind of CIA plot.

Speaker 56 And the idea that in Ukraine there could be independent anti-corruption institutions that have the ability to investigate the government is anathema, you know, because of course for them, you know, corruption is part of who they are.

Speaker 56 I mean, it's part of why they rule russia is a state which is where the economy is partly designed to benefit the people who run the country and the people who run the country all have two hats you know they are on the one hand political figures and on the other hand they are you know they have deep sometimes control of companies or investments in companies.

Speaker 56 The Russian economy is the same people who run it.

Speaker 56 There's no distinction between the distinction we were just making a few minutes ago between CEOs and the president. I mean, there isn't a distinction like that in Russia.

Speaker 56 And so for them, the idea that there's an independent anti-corruption institute is, I mean, that's terrifying, you know, because an independent anti-corruption decision would find Putin to be corrupt in five minutes.

Speaker 56 So, you know, of course they're against that. I mean, independent anti-corruption decisions have their problems.
I mean, they can.

Speaker 56 they can misfunction and so on. That's a longer conversation.

Speaker 56 But of course, they're intolerable and unacceptable in an autocratic state because it means that the leader who is making money from politics would be exposed.

Speaker 56 And of course, the other thing that's typical and maybe essential to autocracy is secrecy.

Speaker 56 You know, they don't want people to know how much money they have or how the system really works or where the money is invested.

Speaker 56 And they're against transparency and they're against accountability and they're against all of that. And that's the essence of their system.

Speaker 56 And of course, to the degree to which there are elements of that kind of secrecy creeping into our own system, we should be worried about those too.

Speaker 49 And that's why it was important, actually, in a lot of ways that Zelensky changed course on this, right?

Speaker 51 To like send a signal of differentiation.

Speaker 56 I haven't been there and I don't know the graphic details of exactly why it happened, but yeah, it is important that he changed.

Speaker 74 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 76 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 71 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 77 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 76 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 83 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 85 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 5 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 8 and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 29 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 31 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 35 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 39 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at at MS.now.

Speaker 67 Okay, let's do Sudan.

Speaker 52 Before we get into kind of the micro about what is happening, you've been there twice.

Speaker 47 My eyes were tired last night, so I listened to this story.

Speaker 50 It was a very lovely British lady that was doing the reading and then looked at the just really,

Speaker 50 I was about to say wonderful, but the photography is wonderfully done by Lindsay Adario. But,

Speaker 66 you know, the pictures are pretty gruesome.

Speaker 68 But before we get into like the details of Sudan, you kind of broaden it out to this bigger point about how Sudan is what the end of the liberal world order looks like.

Speaker 50 So let's talk about that in the macro and then we'll get down to the details of the conflict.

Speaker 56 You know, this is a subject I've written about in other places.

Speaker 56 And at other, you know, you can write about it in the context of Russia and Ukraine and other places of Israel, actually in Gaza as well. But in Sudan, it's particularly dramatic.

Speaker 56 So in Sudan, you have a place where the state has effectively disappeared. There's a civil war.
They're basically parts of what used to be the Sudanese military are fighting each other.

Speaker 56 And there's a long history to that,

Speaker 56 which I can explain if you want.

Speaker 56 But the state has disintegrated. And all around Sudan, there are these outside powers who have an interest in how this war goes or are making money out of it or selling weapons.

Speaker 56 And that includes an amazing array of states. I mean, so the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, the Turks, the Egyptians, the Russians are there.
The Russians are there on both sides of the war.

Speaker 56 The Iranians are there.

Speaker 56 There are some Islamic groups that they support. Actually, the Ukrainians are there.
And that is, to me, almost one of the most interesting pieces of the story because, of course, they don't care.

Speaker 56 They're not supporting either side or helping either side. They're there to find and kill Russians.
And that tells you.

Speaker 34 That was like the most interesting side quest in the story

Speaker 41 when I got to that.

Speaker 30 I had to pause it, rewind. I was like, wait, what?

Speaker 54 Yeah, the Ukrainians are just going after the Russian militants, I guess?

Speaker 56 Yeah,

Speaker 56 because the Wagner group, remember this kind of Russian mercenaries, they were fighting on one side. Now they appear to be helping the other side as well.
So

Speaker 56 that's another piece of the story. So you have all these groups who have an interest in prolonging the war or helping one side, or a lot of them are interested in gold.
There's a lot of gold in Sudan.

Speaker 56 Some are interested in other resources. Saudis have land investments in Sudan.
And so what you have is a kind of, you can't even really call it a proxy war. I mean, it's an anarchic free-for-all.

Speaker 56 And some of it uses, you know, there are old ethnic conflicts and old, you know, lines of conflict in Sudan that have been there for many years.

Speaker 56 But now they're amplified and juiced up by all these outside powers, you know, by drones, which are cheap and, you know, widely available and by other kinds of weaponry that is much more lethal than what was available even 10 or 15 years ago.

Speaker 56 And so you have that situation. And then what you don't have is any...

Speaker 56 outsiders, any framework, any UN negotiators, any

Speaker 56 appointment from, there is theoretically, technically, actually, there's somebody who's appointed by the Secretary General of the UN to be a negotiator there, but he's almost never there and he's a ghostly figure.

Speaker 56 And what you also don't have is Americans.

Speaker 56 You know, we had a little bit during the Biden administration, towards the end, the last couple of years, they had an envoy there, but it's actually been a decline over a decade of American interest, kind of both diplomatic interest and other kinds of interest in Sudan.

Speaker 56 Humanitarian interest. I mean, there was a moment, and I remember this actually rather well, when Darfur was a big cause in the United States.

Speaker 56 And the Janjaweed, who are, who've now evolved in something called the Rapid Support Forces, who are one of the halves of

Speaker 56 the civil war,

Speaker 56 people understood that they were trying to commit genocide in Darfur. And actually, American evangelicals were very interested in Sudan because the southern part of the country is Christian.

Speaker 56 It's now broken off. It's now a separate state.
And the United States was actually part of that process, negotiating that

Speaker 56 and so on. And I'm not going to say that U.S.
efforts were always amazingly successful. I mean, obviously, they weren't, or the war wouldn't have started again, but there was U.S.

Speaker 56 interest and engagement. And now, of course, there's nothing.
And so the UN is gone, Europeans have cut back. The U.S.
is invisible.

Speaker 56 And so what you have instead is these middle powers who have financial or transactional interests.

Speaker 56 And so you have no, by liberal world order, I mean the UN charter, you know, the idea that there is, you know, countries' borders have some meaning, that there are rules of engagement in international combat, all that.

Speaker 56 That's all gone. None of it's visible there at all.
And what you have is a kind of chaos and

Speaker 56 a war that one of the reasons why I think we find it hard to understand the war is because it doesn't seem to be, it's not like there's a good guys and bad guys, or you know, one side is for, you know, left wing or right wing.

Speaker 47 So could you just explain the sides?

Speaker 15 Because it is a little, it's pretty murky.

Speaker 56 It's murky because essentially there's more than one, more than two sides, rather, but they're there are two main groups. And one of them is the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Speaker 56 And this is a, you know, this has been... Effectively, the Sudanese Armed Forces has been running the country for many decades in different formats.

Speaker 56 And then the other group is the Rapid Support Forces, who were affiliated to the Sudanese regime and were actually created by their previous dictator.

Speaker 56 And they're the thing that used to be called the Janjaweed. And they were a group of originally based on nomadic Arab tribes who fought with and tried to ethnically cleanse the

Speaker 56 farmers, the so-called African farmers who spoke different language, non-Arabic languages in Western Sudan and Darfur. And they were at one point together and now they're fighting one another.

Speaker 25 So there's no ethnic...

Speaker 51 That's what I was trying to get at.

Speaker 41 Is there an ethnic

Speaker 4 difference between those two groups?

Speaker 56 There are, but it's not just about that. I mean, it is sort of people from the western part of the country against people from the eastern part of the country very roughly.

Speaker 56 But a lot of the fight is about control over gold or control over territory or

Speaker 56 who should be in charge of this region or that region. It's not a war where there is a kind of clear ideology or even clear ethnic divisions.
It's really just about power and control.

Speaker 56 And I think that makes it hard to understand and hard to feel sympathetic with anybody. And it also is part of the explanation for why

Speaker 56 it's so destructive. I mean, you have mercenaries fighting, actually more mercenaries are fighting on the RSF side and the mercenaries

Speaker 56 are often unpaid and they seem to have been told by their commanders, you can steal whatever you want and that's your payment.

Speaker 56 And so you have this kind of massive theft also going on during the war and people being robbed. And Khartoum, which had a, you know, there was a middle-class part of Khartoum.

Speaker 56 I stayed in a kind of middle-class suburb of Khartoum when I was there. You had people living middle-class lives or people had some wealth accumulated.

Speaker 56 There were places where we saw kind of piles of washing machines that had been stolen out of people's houses and were, you know, the RSF didn't have time to take them away when they retreated from the city.

Speaker 56 So there's an enormous amount of theft as well. I mean, on both sides, there are kind of underlying conflicts.

Speaker 56 There are ethnic groups in the western part of the country that have always been neglected and so on.

Speaker 56 But it's really that if you look at the, you know, I ask a lot of people, you know, are the leaders of either side concerned about civilians?

Speaker 56 You know, do they care about this immense civilian suffering?

Speaker 56 You know, 14 million people displaced, something like half the population will go hungry at some point this year, most children are out of school. Do they care about that?

Speaker 56 And several people said to me, No, we don't think they care. And then, as I said, fueled by these middle-sized powers, the war continues, and it's simply nihilistic and destructive.
And the U.S.

Speaker 56 is nowhere to be seen, and the UN is nowhere to be seen. But the other thing worth saying is that the Sudanese themselves continue to ask about the, I mean, I think, why was I there?

Speaker 56 Why did they let me in? I think partly because they want Americans there.

Speaker 56 I mean, they had this idea that you couldn't tell, you know, we could get America interested if we give you, people said that to me.

Speaker 56 And, you know, they would, people would ask about why was America gone? And this is even before we've got to the question of aid. It's just about diplomacy.

Speaker 56 You know, and so there's a maybe it's not even realistic, or maybe it's based on some kind of false memory of what Americans used.

Speaker 56 But there's an idea that Americans used to be able to come in and negotiate and have enough power to get people to sit down together. And that's, you know, doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 74 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 76 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 71 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 77 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 76 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 83 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 85 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 5 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 8 and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 29 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 32 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 35 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 39 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 31 There are a lot there, just on the U.S. side.

Speaker 8 You know, there's part of me that says, okay, well, I mean, obviously, I agree with this premise about just how brutish life is without, you know, a liberal world order.

Speaker 66 On the other hand, this has been happening in Sudan for like a quarter century, back even when the U.S.

Speaker 57 was doing more, right?

Speaker 49 And so I do wonder, like, what...

Speaker 62 Is it like appreciably worse?

Speaker 49 Like, the U.S.'s absence is notable? Like,

Speaker 52 you gave one example that was pretty heart-wrenching about a doctor who was

Speaker 2 talking about how he wasn't wasting food because he'd heard new rumors that whatever Trump and Elon Musk were worried about waste, which is pretty sad.

Speaker 70 So I guess I just wonder on both points, like was it meaningfully different when there was more of a whatever international Western order there?

Speaker 61 And what has changed?

Speaker 56 Some people who've read the piece have had the same comment. I mean, so there have been moments when U.S.
intervention helped. We did help end a previous civil war, this kind of North-South civil war.

Speaker 56 You know, we did help create South Sudan, which hasn't been a huge success, but it was a way of ending that conflict.

Speaker 56 So we have had, you know, we, and we, I don't mean just the United States, I mean US and others and the UN and others.

Speaker 56 Separately, and I haven't talked about this yet, I mean, US aid to Sudan, so provision of food, this is not democracy promotion, this is not any you know, any anything beyond provision of food and humanitarian aid has been hugely important, not just into Sudan, but also the helping Sudanese refugees who are all over the region.

Speaker 56 And that was something that we have been doing for a long time, and that did matter. And the absence of that is already noticeable.

Speaker 56 And so one of the things to remember about USAID is that USAID was about, just humanitarian aid, I should say, was about 40% of the world's humanitarian aid, but it was a lot of the, even more, maybe 90% of the logistics.

Speaker 56 So all kinds of things like trucking contracts and statistics and payment systems. A lot of that was run by USAID.
And remember how USAID was ended. It was ended from one day to the next.

Speaker 56 You know, people were thrown out of their offices. They were told they couldn't have access to their email.
You know, they didn't have access to the payments systems.

Speaker 56 They couldn't reach the people they were supposed to be in touch with in Egypt or wherever. And I talked to people who had had that experience.

Speaker 56 So this very abrupt, disastrous, kind of catastrophic way that it ended without any form of handoff meant that all over, you know, all over the world, actually, but certainly all over Sudan, there were these very abrupt shifts and disasters.

Speaker 56 You know, so there's one part of Sudan where refugees are coming over the border because there's been a battle in a city called Al-Fasher, and they're coming over the border.

Speaker 56 And when they cross the border into Chad, they find almost literally nothing.

Speaker 56 Like there's supposed to be UNHCR there, that's the refugee organization, but they don't have enough trucks, they don't have food, they don't have people.

Speaker 56 and you know, and the people who are there are about to lose their jobs because their contracts end, you know, in this month or next month. That's directly because of the U.S.

Speaker 56 cuts, even though I think technically UNHCR wasn't supposed to be.

Speaker 56 I don't think people who worked there thought of themselves as being dependent on USAD, but the way the system worked, the U.S. was so important and so central that the whole thing falls apart.

Speaker 56 And yes, I talk about the doctor who had a hospital full of malnourished children, and these are very tiny babies who are extremely weak and their mothers who are very weak.

Speaker 56 And in order to, they can be saved and you can save them with these nutritional supplements, some of which are made in the U.S.

Speaker 56 And the doctor I met there, this very young, articulate doctor, who said, who was explaining to me, you know, we are really careful about how we use it and we don't waste it and we only give it to, and I thought, oh my God, you know,

Speaker 56 this is a man who deals with starving children every day and he feels like he has to talk about not wasting food. I mean, it was, for me, it it was very embarrassing.

Speaker 56 And I think I talked about this on your show once before. There were other things too.

Speaker 56 There's a one of the really positive things about Sudan, if you want me to say something uplifting, is that one of the things you do see is a lot of the Sudanese have begun to organize themselves.

Speaker 56 There's a movement called the Emergency Response Movement, and they create these soup kitchens that then raise money and help feed people.

Speaker 56 And so when everything disappeared, when the whole infrastructure fell apart and the government disappears and there's no international groups there.

Speaker 56 What you do still find are these local organizations, but some of them, even some of them, were getting their food from sources that, unbeknownst to them, turned out to have some USAI funding.

Speaker 56 And so, you know, we would go to a soup kitchen and they would say, Well, we used to give people food five days a week, and now it's down to three days a week because we don't have enough.

Speaker 56 I mean, literally, they're giving them bean soup. And so, we're talking about pennies, you know, a few dollars.
You know, that's what

Speaker 56 does a handful of beans cost that they aren't able to get because of these cuts. And the kind of criminal carelessness of it really comes home to you there.

Speaker 56 I mean, it wasn't like they said, okay, this is an over too big an institution and we're going to reform it and fix it.

Speaker 56 No, you know, they had to destroy it or put it in the wood chipper or whatever it was that Musk said he was doing and

Speaker 56 take its name off the building and make everybody go home. I mean, you know, some of it is still supposedly functioning, and some of the people I talk to still think have their jobs for the moment.

Speaker 56 But the repercussions of that carelessness will be felt for a long time. And, you know, as I said, in really one of the poorest places in the world.
And that also the Sudanese find just inexplicable.

Speaker 56 Nobody understands why. I mean, what do I say? I can't explain it to them.

Speaker 49 Well, you know, we've got a, the vice president had to go on a rafting trip and a boat trip in Ohio, and we had to raise the river, you know, because it was a little too low.

Speaker 61 So we had to make sure the water in the river was higher. And then we spent 50 million on Trump's golf trips.

Speaker 3 So, you know, we got to, you know, priorities are pretty important.

Speaker 49 Those folks you're talking to, I just really quick want to have you share some of those stories.

Speaker 66 And you're in Khartoum.

Speaker 50 I can't imagine how you have will to go on, kind of, if you're in Khartoum.

Speaker 8 I mean, your point about the U.S.

Speaker 63 is

Speaker 61 it's sort of this adding insult to injury, right?

Speaker 62 It's like nobody cares about us.

Speaker 52 Like, both sides of this conflict don't care about us.

Speaker 57 It's kind of a conflict about nothing, really, I mean, except power and money.

Speaker 61 And then, you know, the folks that were doing this minimal amount to help make sure we didn't starve, they don't care about us anymore.

Speaker 16 And you're talking about how you're there and, you know, there's still life happening, you know, like regular life in Khartoum happening.

Speaker 50 But then you go to another, you know, there's a bombing in another part of town, you know, and

Speaker 37 they're pulling dead people out of whatever buildings.

Speaker 61 And, you know, the folks that you're able to talk to, like,

Speaker 49 how do they go on, I guess, is my question.

Speaker 56 So there are, you, you meet amazingly idealistic people or people who say, you know, this is my country.

Speaker 56 I will help as long as I can. There are still people, I mean, it's funny.
I mean, without having read,

Speaker 56 I don't know, James Madison or John Locke, I mean, you still hear people say, I can imagine a different future for this country.

Speaker 56 You know, I can imagine, you know, some system of power sharing, you know, where we weren't fighting, you know, or don't even need to use the word democracy, but some more peaceful way of doing things.

Speaker 56 You know, I can imagine the rule of law. And there are people who still think it's worth trying to build that.

Speaker 56 And there have been moments in the past, even in the past few years, where it felt like they were getting closer to something better. And they stay there.
I mean, obviously some people leave.

Speaker 56 People who can. Of course,

Speaker 56 the other thing is that some people can't leave. I mean, they just don't have the money to leave or they don't have anywhere to go or they have family members to take care of.

Speaker 56 But it's always been amazing to me, and this is true in other, lots lots of other places I've been to, how

Speaker 56 human beings can still be inspired by the idea that they can make their country better, or they can do something better, or they can, you know, they can imagine something that's more just and more fair, and they're willing to try to build it.

Speaker 56 And

Speaker 56 I have met

Speaker 56 people in the Russian opposition.

Speaker 56 I've met people in the Iranian opposition.

Speaker 56 I've met the Sudanese who are on the ground. And even in places that seem completely hopeless, you find that people are willing to do that.

Speaker 56 And that continues to be, for me, it's a kind of miracle that I keep uncovering in different parts of the world.

Speaker 56 I'm not going to say everyone does that, and there are plenty of people who are selfish, as I say, but there are always a core of people who are willing to keep trying.

Speaker 28 Well, the story is really striking.

Speaker 49 Folks should go read it in the Atlantic because there's a lot of other details in there.

Speaker 53 I guess I should also say, it's not Sudan, it's South Sudan, the country you said we sort of helped cleave off.

Speaker 50 But the one amount of policy that the U.S.

Speaker 61 is engaging in right now with Sudan is we did send some migrants who were not from South Sudan to South Sudan as part of some deal where they want

Speaker 53 one of the leaders, I guess, to get off the sanctions list.

Speaker 21 So this is what we're doing now.

Speaker 86 Rather than providing the plumpy nutch or whatever, we're sending migrants from other places to the region.

Speaker 56 That was a horrifying story. That, you know, they now figure only as some kind of useful,

Speaker 56 you know, place where we can, they have a prison that we can borrow. I mean, that's, that's it.

Speaker 38 It's just crazy.

Speaker 40 Okay. The last thing, and

Speaker 26 I think unintentionally, actually, we have a little minimum, a little Ann Applebaum book club happening because in the last two times you're on, one time you met Renschen's The Captive Mind, which is kind of a book, Polish book about the mindset of autocracy and fascism and how it warps people's minds and behavior.

Speaker 61 And then you mentioned the Opermans, which is a fiction book about Nazi Germany and

Speaker 86 a Jewish family living in Nazi Germany. It's like, it was astounding.

Speaker 49 I read that on vacation.

Speaker 26 I did Oppermans and then I did Gay Romance.

Speaker 41 I got a little bit of both when I was on vacation the summer.

Speaker 10 But so do you have a third book?

Speaker 20 Do you have a third book you could recommend for us?

Speaker 51 I've now done two.

Speaker 56 I just read a great novel, actually, a fairly new novel called The Director.

Speaker 56 And it's about a Nazi film director who goes to, it's based on a true story, who goes to Hollywood, fails, and goes back to, sorry, he wasn't a Nazi. He was a German anti-Nazi film director.

Speaker 56 He goes to Hollywood, then he fails, and he comes back to Nazi Germany. And it's about what that's like.
It's very good. It's by a German writer called Daniel Kelleman.
It's been translated.

Speaker 56 in the last year.

Speaker 25 I will check that out.

Speaker 18 That also is relevant.

Speaker 54 We definitely have some failed people in our administration who have decided to go MAGA, who were not MAGA before.

Speaker 49 The vice president, for example, but many more all the way down.

Speaker 56 That is actually the subject of it. I mean, it's different contexts and so on, but it's very good.
It's about how do you readjust.

Speaker 49 And Applebum, I appreciate you so much.

Speaker 54 It's a wonderful story and appreciate the work that you're doing, traveling over there and keeping us informed.

Speaker 51 And we'll have you back again soon, I hope.

Speaker 56 Thank you.

Speaker 50 Everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwork Podcast.

Speaker 8 Peace.

Speaker 46 When the play cements, I get the maddest. I'm so sorry, baby, it's a habit.
When you go away, I get the saddest.

Speaker 46 Lately, I'm hard to manage.

Speaker 46 Rest with me on Sabbath. You don't feed those women, they are average.
Fruits and juices, all that you desire. Bleed you water from the islands.

Speaker 46 You can be yourself for me.

Speaker 46 Wait on you.

Speaker 46 Have to check your for me.

Speaker 46 Waiting.

Speaker 46 Now that I know what you're feeling.

Speaker 46 Hold me,

Speaker 46 hold me.

Speaker 46 Don't you feel that holding

Speaker 46 way

Speaker 46 Have to check the falling,

Speaker 46 waiting.

Speaker 46 Now we will know

Speaker 46 what you feel.

Speaker 46 I know that I've been gone.

Speaker 46 Please don't fall for this mold.

Speaker 46 My mood's been real slowy.

Speaker 46 I cry when I'm old.

Speaker 46 All these people don't know

Speaker 46 that I deal with all of these doubts.

Speaker 46 Take it out once a while.

Speaker 46 Then all I do is cry out all of the pain. Even when the sunlight just feels like rain, you're the only one who embraces the change.
People think that they can't end up my way.

Speaker 46 But they all got me with today.

Speaker 46 Don't even try not to wanna play. I got something special, bring it to my play.

Speaker 46 I got big plans for this all I made. But you're willing in on me anyway.

Speaker 46 I'll be staying.

Speaker 46 Holy girl, holy girl. Thought you've been holding.

Speaker 46 You go have to check your fall later,

Speaker 46 way later.

Speaker 46 Not that feeling more. Don't you feel good?

Speaker 46 I'm holding up.

Speaker 31 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 10 She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding.

Speaker 87 Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease.
And that was a different kind of difficult.

Speaker 87 So we asked her doctor for more help.

Speaker 88 Seeing symptoms like these in a loved one, it could be time to ask their doctor about Rexulti, Rexpiprazole 2 milligrams, the only FDA-approved treatment proven to reduce the symptoms of this condition.

Speaker 88 Rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment.

Speaker 88 Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke, report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent.

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